All wired up but nowhere to go
I've 'never had much use for the "netroots" gang, and believe me, the feeling is mutual.
The netroots activists, sometimes called "the party in a laptop," burst on the scene during the 2004 Howard Dean presidential campaign. They tend to be youngish and techno-savvy, espousing radical-progressive political views. They demonstrated some cute tricks in 2004 — remember meetups and flashmobs? — but more importantly, they proved that candidates can successfully raise funds on the Internet.
If not necessarily a force to be reckoned with, the netizens at MoveOn.org, Markos Zúniga's Daily Kos website, or at MyDD.com (My Direct Democracy) have proved to be a force worth cozying up to. With much fanfare, Virginia's former governor and then-presidential aspirant Mark Warner addressed the cream of the political blogosphere at the YearlyKos convention this year. "I think you guys are changing the landscape,"the webogenic Warner soft-soaped the netrootniks.
Internet triumphalism suffuses the netroots’ rhetoric. If you spend time on the key websites, you quickly learn that everyone who’s not blogging is an idiot. Democratic campaign consultants are morons. Pollsters who don’t produce the desired results are fools. It goes without saying that writers and commentators yoked to the dreaded MSM, or mainstream media, are cretins. Yesterday the target was New York Times political writer Adam Nagourney: "He and his running mates in the MSM that are obsequious power worshipers have been writing crap like this for years," a Kos contributor wrote.
It's not that I disagree; it's just that the netroots' bombast and jarring, violent language, e.g., "We're going to kick some Republicans to the curb this week," aren't taking them anywhere. Case in point: Connecticut. It's impressive that left-wing bloggers seized upon the candidacy of my erstwhile friend Ned Lamont; Zúniga even appeared in one of Lamont's first campaign ads. But running up to election night, Lamont's sinking popularity had fallen victim to incumbent Joe Lieberman's Big Labor and Big Lobby money. Hartford Courant columnist Colin McEnroe, once a huge Lieberman fan, was predicting a significant Lieberman victory, albeit with a heavy heart: "Joe has lost his innocence," McEnroe writes. "He's an opportunist, a self-seeker, like all the rest. He'll win the election and wind up as chair of the environment committee. We'll never see him again."
The bloggers will be hyping their own get-out-the-vote efforts; maybe they will affect results, maybe not. I'd rather have a fleet of Teamster drivers on my side, frankly. And the netroots are already preparing their audiences for the inevitable, paranoid questioning of the electronic voting systems.
"A sea change is taking place in American politics," George Washington University professor Henry Farrell writes in a long article, "Bloggers and Parties," in the current issue of Boston Review. "What unites the netroots is that they identify with a coherent political project to remake the Democratic Party as a more vigorously partisan entity.’’
I wish it were true. But the results point elsewhere, to a Democratic Party becoming more conservative — did someone mention Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton? — and to candidates tarred with netroots lunacy — did someone mention Howard Dean? — failing in important races. It’s all well and good to rage against the machine, but now in two consecutive elections, I’d say the score is Machine 2, Rage 0.
I’m planning to write the same column two years from now, and I’ll be happy to be proven wrong.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.
